Want to hack law ? Then start by by putting the entire code of law in an SVN-like system. Including proposed laws. With traceability of authors, who voted for them, etc... And an associated wiki for comments. And a complete list of cases that used them. This would be invaluable.

Want to hack law ? Then start by by putting the entire code of law in an SVN-like system. Including proposed laws. With traceability of authors, who voted for them, etc... And an associated wiki for comments. And a complete list of cases that used them. This would be invaluable.

If we're going that route, the author/voting records should link to a database of campaign contributions as well.

... and yet no one will care. OH dont get me wrong. Some will. But the vast majority punch their straight ticket D or R and are *very* happy with that choice. Their team 'won'/'lost'.

They will even go as far as to take on whatever attributes their 'team' has to defend it. Even though if you sit them down and talk about it they really want the other 'team'. A perfect example of this effect is when Howard Stern went to Harlem and asked people what they thought about Obama and used John McCain's talking

Rather than a version control system, I think it would be more useful to put the law into a requirements management system (after all, what is the law but a set of requirements?) That *might* help lawmakers to see if they are complete (cover what is intended to be covered), consistent and measurable. I don't know of any open source requirements management tools though -- at least, not ones that are still maintained. Perhaps requirements management goes against the hacker ethos (which would reduce the open source effort put into such things, although it wouldn't eliminate it completely of course). If requirements management is against the hacker ethos then I suspect that attempts to hack the law won't work very well.

Rather than a version control system, I think it would be more useful to put the law into a requirements management system (after all, what is the law but a set of requirements?) That *might* help lawmakers to see if they are complete (cover what is intended to be covered), consistent and measurable.

If you try and push this, you'll run into serious real-world acceptance problems. In some cases the law is deliberately obtuse, obscure, open to misinterpretation, and so on. It's this way by design, because two various groups couldn't agree on any wording, or they were under pressure to create a law that violates the laws of physics but managed to word it in such a way that it may not, or it's meant to be interpreted in a way that's more or less the opposite of what it says, or a thousand other reasons. The law is not a Turing machine, and never will be. The last thing most politicians or lawyers would want is a comprehensive overview system of the kind that's being proposed in the above posts.

Name one. Highlight the specific language that is broken and explain why it is broken. We all purport to be rational people on/., right? Let's see the data instead of accepting statements like this as self-evident.

Sorry dude. The laws of my country that I could use as example would not make sense to you, much less written in English rather than Portuguese (I'm terrible to write in English and the Google translation sucks to anything more complex). But would be enough to you stop a little to think and analyze the laws of your country, you inevitably would find many examples by yourself.

1st 2nd 4th 5th 9th and 10th Amendments. The proof they are broken being the number of Supreme Court cases raised where arguments are about the meaning of them. Well, except the 9th and 10th. Those are simply ignored.

Rather than a version control system, I think it would be more useful to put the law into a requirements management system (after all, what is the law but a set of requirements?)

That would require the people proposing the laws to admit that the sole purpose is a sincerely dislike of a group of people and the desire to disenfranchise them, which bluntly stated would result in outrage. The pill is far easier to swallow when it's coated in legalese sugar. Dura lex, sed lex.

In most countries without common law (I can speak first-hand about Italy and Germany), the laws are an unholy mess, impossible to read, search, and interpret; in most cases you have no hope other than asking a consult to a lawyer.
You want the same people that spent at least 5 years studying this crap and make their living out of it to work actively to simplify it. It is a great idea, but I do not have any hope of seeing this applied.
Shirky's law applies here as well: "institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution".

But individual lawyers and legal secretaries could make this database their full-time job, in which case it wouldn't be a conflict for them any more. There is already an industry publishing books that list references from the law to cases where it was applied. This would be a natural extension, wouldn't it?

It's not clear that common law makes the situation any better. It may seem to do so when the relevant legal history is short but when you have many centuries of precedents, laws, and other confusion, it hardly makes things simpler.

Common law is worse. You have a simple law, and thousands of court cases modifying that law, with no means to reference the modifying court cases in the law itself, so it's impossible to "know" the law.

You have a simple law, and thousands of court cases modifying that law, with no means to reference the modifying court cases in the law itself, so it's impossible to "know" the law.

Both statute laws and court cases that form binding precedent (as well as some that don't) are published. As are products that link from one to the other. Its not impossible to trace them, but it does take work, but you don't have to do all of it yourself, as there are organizations that expend considerable resources doing this,

Its not impossible to trace them, but it does take work, but you don't have to do all of it yourself, as there are organizations that expend considerable resources doing this, and will, for a fee, let you have access to their work product.

But if LexusNexus didn't make a particular link, or a non-binding precedent would be persuasive and the link isn't drawn (or you use Westlaw and your opposition uses LexusNexus and the information going into court isn't parallel), then you could have issues.

With a suitable structure, you could try to crowsdsource this work, but I suspect you'd find that the universe of people with both the skills and willingness to be objective needed to do it well and the universe of people with the motivation to do it for free have less overlap than you might want.

That and non-binding precedents are great to have, even if, well, not binding.

My "solution" is that if a law is stricken or modified by a ruling, then the written law is ordered to be changed to reflect the finding, with a 30 day delay to allow the legi

just acquiring a complete listing which could be called "the code of law", translating all laws ever written into a single static document with all modifications made in-place, all "removed by another law" sections having been actually removed, completely ignoring all history and just trying to get a single snapshot of the current state of how things are presently codified, would be more than a lifetime's worth of work.

Collaborative systems only work when everyone is trying to collaborate, but law is mostly about benefiting yourself and screwing others. Open source software can have different build options and forks for those who strongly disagree with the mainline version, the law cannot (unless you are religious which seems to allow certain opt-outs).

Want to hack law ? Then start by by putting the entire code of law in an SVN-like system. Including proposed laws. With traceability of authors, who voted for them, etc... And an associated wiki for comments. And a complete list of cases that used them. This would be invaluable.

Law seems to be the social equivalent of TFA: most people will base their entire opinions on the summary, and never bother to actually read the thing itself.

The functional equivalent of an SVN-system already exists and has for decades. What you're describing are very basic components of what is called "legislative history." Bill authors, vote counts, comments made both on the floor of the legislature and in committee: these things (and more) can all be found in the Congressional Record for federal material, and every state legislature has a similar record. Lists of cases that refer to particular laws have been around for well over a century; the various publication types are called annotations, citators, and legal encyclopedias.

The real problem is that very few people will bother to read what is actually out there. Ask yourself: when was the last time you commented on proposed legislation without actually bothering to read it? When was the last time you commented on a court decision without bothering to read the decision? These things are already available, for free, in most cases online and without any ads.

We should be clear about the problem. All this information actually is publicly available: the US Code is versioned by codification year (a new version is codified every six years with interim supplements), and you can find out who voted for or introduced what (including amendments) in the Congressional record. The Code of Federal regulations and the Federal Register serve an analogous function for agency regulations.

So the problem is not the availability of the information. It is all publicly available fro

We should be clear about the problem. All this information actually is publicly available

This much is true.

We should be clear about the problem. All this information actually is publicly available: the US Code is versioned by codification year (a new version is codified every six years with interim supplements), and you can find out who voted for or introduced what (including amendments) in the Congressional record. The Code of Federal regulations and the Federal Register serve an analogous function for age

Want to hack law ? Then start by by putting the entire code of law in an SVN-like system. Including proposed laws. With traceability of authors, who voted for them, etc... And an associated wiki for comments. And a complete list of cases that used them. This would be invaluable.

You probably need to start first with 100% codification of statute law, which no jurisdiction in the US that I am aware of has (certainly, the federal government does not), and establishing a fundamental (e.g., Constitutional

computer programmers try to play by the rules: they read the manual and then try to follow what they've learned. Lawyers, meanwhile, are hacking the laws by default. They're always trying to get around following the manual.

... and the major problem is that the law seem to have been written by the same developers that wrote mush of Adobe's Flash code. It needs a major refactoring to get rid of the holes. (Sorry to pick on Adobe, but I have an RSS feed just for warnings for exploits in their software).

The terms "and," "or," "may," and "shall" are relatively straightforward and do not receive much attention from lawyers. Terms like "reasonable," "harm," "intentional," and "negligent" tend to suck up much more of their time.

They also try to bend the rules, hack the rules, and find exploits. Lawyers are law nerds, and they hack the law. They also compile manuals that are undecipherable to non-law nerds but make perfect sense to themselves. They write them for themselves, and then they do not understand when others say the whole thing is confusing.

Sounds oddly familiar.... The only difference between law nerds and computer nerds is that law nerds dress nicer. That an

What a load of BS. Most computer programmers most certainly don't try to play by the rules nor do they ever RTFM (hell, the term exists for a reason). They hack something up, change it randomly until it compiles and ship it.

I've read legislation and proposed changes or even proposed that the legislation be dropped altogether. I mainly got interested in the first round of cybercrime laws that proposed making me a criminal for using netcat nessus and the like.

I set up simple word processing macros that addresses a well written and respectful letter to a list of target politicians (usually all of them). Most of the time I've received some sort of response. It makes it easier for the politician too because they can go straight to the parts of the legislation that are bothersome and move those amendments. If many politicians move the amendments they look insightful to the media, co-operative to their party and hard working to their supporters. Your correspondence, on paper, may make them consider things they hadn't. Also forget email - the retention rate is to low and not portable enough for them to talk to a colleague.

There are many politicians that don't read the legislation at all and just vote on it because they have been sold an opinion or they have to tow the party line. This is why many of the non-partisan issues never get solved and no party want to give the other party the credit for solving a structural issue. So it remains an issue, if enough people write then they can say "Well I tried to do something".

If more people do this it would really make a difference to the quality of the laws we get. I hope it catches on.

Wow, thanks for the thoughtful and constructive post that is a refreshing change from the kneejerk cynicism/fatalism that is the usual Slashdot groupthink.

I once was on a plane and sat next to a state legislator. I brought up the concept of gerrymandering electoral districts, and argued that it's unfair to moderate voters and creates a less responsive, more divisive political culture. I think he honestly hadn't thought much about these issues before and I hopefully influenced his opinion a bit. Also it'

Do you have any specific stories or evidence which let you to believe you made a difference?

Absolutely, and not just one, but enough time for one.

My first effort was at a state level. The proposed legislation would impose a censorship regime on all web sites for businesses in our state, a cool $25,000 per business that wanted a web site and the associated departmental time and paperwork to process it before you could publish - lest be liable for severe penalties.

I know they didn't read email so that is where I had the idea of using word processing macros to generate letters. I decided then that

The only way to make the legal system logical would be to throw it out and build another system from scratch.

Yes, because - as every software developer know firsthand - when you throw out an old crufty system and develop a brand, sparkling, new one in its place it is always a smooth process that provides tremendous benefits

And may I propose that in the new system, the *intent* of the rules should be documented alongside the rules, to prevent the system from being abused.

Example - instead of stating "Bicycles should be equipped with lights" a rule could state "Bicyclists are hard to see in the dark. To prevent bicyclists from getting hurt or killed due to being poorly visible, bicycles should be equipped with lights ".

Let's say someone is dressed up in bright, glow-in-the-dark clothing but is riding a bike without light. Or on

A conference committee is an entity to which a bill is referred in order that a single bill to be passed by identically by the House and Senate can be crafted. The bill that actually becomes law has to be passed identically by both Houses.

The first amendment explicitly excepts cases where your speech causes harm to others.

No it doesn't. Here is what it says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Anything else is just a matter of interpretation or skirting around due process. A literalist would not see any limits as to what speech is protected.

Also your fire in a theater example is no longer good law. You'll want to read Brandenberg instead.

Yes, the Constitution is often very clear. The literal wording doesn't make reasonable exceptions like that; if it did, the document wouldn't be so clear anymore.Yeah, taking it too literally and making up exceptions both seem like bad ideas

Sometimes it isn't clear enough, especially when dealing with situations or technology the Founders hadn't envisioned.

Amendments to add or remove a reasonable exception wouldn't fly because of the group negatively affected.

Actually, judges do take into account the intent of laws as well as the letter of the law. For instance, if there's a controversy about what a particular word or phrase means in a law, they look up what legislators or the executive said about it when they passed it.

For instance, with your bicycle law, the law might have been not "bicycles must have lights" but "bicyclists must make reasonable efforts to remain visible to other traffic." And then the question is what "reasonable efforts" constitutes, and why

Check out www.calguns.net for a description of a gun law hack in California.

Want to own an AR-15 series rifle in California? You can, thanks to the work of some online collaboration and combination of laws.

In a nutshell, the definition of 'detachable magazine' combined with the poorly written assault weapons law, some case law and testimony from the California Dept of Justice Firearms folks resulted in a movement for building AR series rifles legally in California with all the goodies like pistol grips, et